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'Pimp forced Aust women into prostitution'

Peter Mitchell

A Jamaican man accused of being a violent pimp who forced women into prostitution in Australia, including taking one to Dubai and Miami where he pocketed more than $150,000 in earnings, considers "himself a lover of women", according to his US lawyer.

Damion St Patrick Baston is being held in a Florida prison ahead a June 16 trial in Miami, with some of his alleged Australian victims expected to testify against him.

The 37-year-old is charged with sex trafficking by force, fraud and coercion.

"Baston is a violent pimp who has trafficked women across several continents, including in the southern district of Florida, Australia and Dubai," prosecutor Roy Altman told the US District Court.

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Baston's Florida-based lawyer, David Rowe, painted a contrasting picture of the self-described entrepreneur and music producer.

"Mr Baston considers himself a lover of women, not a fighter of women," Rowe told the court.

"Perhaps Mr Baston misunderstood women's capacity for jealousy and has now found himself in an unanticipated tangle, which has landed him behind bars."

Baston, accused of travelling on a fake US passport, was arrested in New York in January after a joint operation by Australian and US authorities.

Much of the evidence detailed in US court documents come from Baston's alleged pimping of two women, one who was his wife, from apartments on the Gold Coast.

In July 2011, posing as a music producer looking for talent in Australia, Baston allegedly met a woman in a Gold Coast restaurant.

They began a romantic relationship and the woman believed they would open a restaurant together, but "he began using violence and the threats of violence to coerce her into prostitution", according to prosecutors.

After making more than $US200,000 on the Gold Coast, he then allegedly took the woman, known in court documents as KL, to Dubai and then Miami.

"As in the Gold Coast and Dubai, Baston kept all of KL's earnings, both from the strip club and from her prostitution," prosecutors alleged.

"KL estimates that she earned approximately $US150,000 from stripping and prostituting in her two months in Miami - all of which Baston kept."

Another alleged Australian victim, known as TJM, was 18 years old when she met Baston in 2009 and the following year, they married in a small Islamic ceremony at an Australian mosque.

"On one occasion, while in the Gold Coast, TJM had not earned as much money as Baston had expected, so he shoved her head through the wall of a bedroom closet," prosecutors alleged.

In 2010, a 21-year-old Lithuanian woman, named as GP and who allegedly worked as a prostitute for Baston, told NSW police he hung her by her feet over a fire escape, forced her to remain in a scalding shower for several hours, and beat her relentlessly.

"According to the sexual battery detective who interviewed GP that night, GP was the most terrified victim she had ever encountered in her 25 years at the police department," prosecutors said.